Gambit: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Solumancer Cycle Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  I wait for a long time. I start to wonder if he’s filing that suspicious activity report Quim was talking about, and if there’s a SWAT team getting ready to rappel through the drop ceiling. My fears are assuaged when the bank manager returns holding five stacks of twenty-dollar bills wrapped in violet-colored straps.

  “Here you are, sir,” he says, placing the stacks side-by-side on his desk in front of me. “I assume twenties are an acceptable denomination?”

  I pick up one of the stacks and flip through it. “Perfect. Thanks.”

  “Thank you for your business, sir,” he says, shaking my hand as I stand up. “Enjoy your day.”

  “You do the same.”

  I slide into the hearse, toss the money onto the passenger seat, and press my forehead to the steering wheel to keep from hyperventilating. The inside of the car is an oven beneath the summer sun, and it’s baking more than just me. I drive away with the air conditioning blasting to alleviate both the heat and the stench.

  The Montague Funeral Home is a simple one-story rambler with a weather-stained roof and a gray cinder block exterior. Add a fence and a few towers and the place could pass for a prison. The lighted sign flickers as I pass it on my way around the building. I cut the engine and knock on the rear loading door. No one answers. Wherefore art thou, Montague?

  I leave the car there and walk around to the front entrance. The spacious, well-appointed lobby is a surprise given the building’s exterior. The gray-haired woman behind the front desk sizes me up as I enter. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Montague.”

  “Just a sec.” She picks up the phone and waits. “Hey. Someone here to see you. Okay.” She hangs up. “He’ll be out shortly, if you’d like to take a seat.” She gestures toward the floral-patterned living room set in the waiting area.

  Mr. Montague emerges from a door near the back of the lobby and shakes my hand. He reminds me of a slice of bacon—thin, greasy, and brown in a three-piece polyester suit that was in style thirty years ago. Like a favorite childhood baseball glove, the suit is worn around the edges, as if it’s become so comfortable he can’t bring himself to throw it away. His plastic safety-pinned name tag says Alvin “Al” Montague, so I address him by his nickname and ask if we might speak in private. He takes me out to the front porch.

  “Mind if I smoke?” he asks, pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

  Not at all, since it looks like you’re going to anyway. “I’m a friend of Quimby Takkanopoulis’s. He told me you might help me out with a little problem I’ve got.”

  Mr. Montague lights up, inhales, and slides the pack and lighter into his breast pocket. “So you’re the guy, huh?” he asks, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “Where’s the, uh…?”

  “Around back.”

  “Let’s talk there.”

  I follow him to where the hearse is parked. His eyes light up in admiration when he sees it. “You in the business?” he asks.

  “I dabble.”

  “You free this afternoon? I’m looking for a driver.”

  “Oh, I don’t—”

  “My regular guy called out sick,” he interrupts. “I was about to bring in a freelancer, but we might be able to work something out on the price if you was interested.”

  “I can’t,” I tell him. “I’ve got a thing this afternoon.”

  He nods, takes a drag, exhales. “Suit yourself.”

  “I did have one question.”

  He flicks his ash, waits.

  “Does the price include cremation?”

  He snorts. “You wanted him cremated, you should’ve told me in advance.”

  “I couldn’t really tell you anything in advance, could I? I need him cremated.”

  “Too late now, you want the job done today. Do it my way and he’ll be in the ground by suppertime.”

  “What’s your way?”

  “I call it the double-decker special. Two bodies. One casket. I get ‘em made with a lower compartment. We slip ‘em in right underneath. Not much room in there, but I’m guessing that ain’t important to you.”

  “How do you get a second body inside without anyone noticing?”

  He leans in. “The trick is in the schematics. Lightweight composite frame, nice and thin but real strong. Outside’s made out of wood or steel or whatever finish the family chooses. Looks just like a regular casket.”

  “What I meant to say was, when do you actually put the body in there?”

  “Oh, I getcha. I getcha. Yeah, I do that before the viewing.”

  “So the second body is in the casket the whole time. While the funeral’s going on and everything.”

  He points at me with two fingers, cigarette between them. “You got it.”

  “How much would you charge me to hold onto the body and cremate it instead?”

  He waggles his head. “Eh. Fifteen.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “You’s think I do this sort of thing for charity? I could get my license revoked. Hell, I could go to prison.”

  “Fifteen grand.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I wish I’d known that before I went to the bank. I can’t withdraw more money now without it looking extra suspicious.”

  He shrugs. “Not my problem, buddy.”

  “How much of a discount would you give me to drive for you this afternoon?”

  “Not five grand.”

  “How about two?”

  “You’re talking a month’s salary for a hearse driver.”

  “You don’t have to actually pay me anything. Just give me a discount off your price. I can get you another three thousand next week if you’ll do the cremation for me instead of this double-decker thing.”

  He crouches and blots out his cigarette on the ground, then stands up, still holding it. “I tell you what. My way? It’s foolproof. Done it dozens of times. You don’t need the body cremated. Ain’t nobody ever gonna know the difference. Once he’s down there, he’s as good as gone. I already got everything set up to do it this way, so I’m gonna do you a favor. You drive for me today, I take ten percent off the top. That’s a thousand bucks for an afternoon’s work. You ain’t gonna make that kind of scratch anywhere else, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Make it two, and I’m in.”

  “Fifteen hundred.”

  “Two. If I drive for you, I’m taking a share of the risk.”

  “Fine. Two it is. Go home and put on your best suit.”

  “What… now?”

  “Yeah, now. You ain’t driving a funeral dressed like that. Be back here by noon.”

  “What about the body?”

  “We’ll move it when you get back.”

  I check the time. 11:12 am. “See you soon.”

  I rush home and change into a slick bespoke suit with a designer necktie, cracking painfully into my true form and then into Arden’s again as I remove the spellvault belt between outfits. I’m beginning to think using a belt to change my appearance was a bad idea. I’m jealous of Bilbo; that guy had a ring. Strange, too, that my first instinct was to call Arden’s apartment ‘home,’ though I’ve only been living in it for a day.

  When I return to the funeral partner, suited up and looking sharp except for the belt, the parking lot is packed. Huge crowds cluster outside the building, expensive cars gleaming in the afternoon sun. This isn’t just any old funeral. This is a big one, for somebody important.

  Mr. Montague comes promptly to the back door when I knock this time. He accompanies me to the hearse, where I open the back gate and show him the suitcase. He takes a sniff and grimaces. “How long’s it been, four or five days?”

  “Give or take.”

  With a disapproving look, he gestures. “Bring it in.”

  I wheel the suitcase through the loading door and follow him down a hallway into an austere prep room with tiled walls and floors like the shower room at my gym. The smell of formaldehyde over death is like plastic wrap over w
eek-old chicken. Montague removes his suit jacket and hangs it on a peg before slipping into some latex gloves. We lift the suitcase onto an empty preparation table, where he unzips it. “You might want to, uh…”

  I remove my jacket and put on a pair of gloves.

  We lift the body out of the suitcase, and Mr. Montague gives it a quick inspection. “Not too messy, by the look of it. Broke his neck, eh?”

  “I’d rather not go into it.”

  “You flunkies are all the same. You’s come in here with your lips sealed, thinking I don’t know why you want my services off the books. I been in this game long enough to know the signs when I see ‘em. Young guy like this. Whole life ahead of him. Buried in a hole with no one to see him off. Ma and Pa Kettle wondering what happened to their little Johnny. Who he got on the wrong side of things with. It’s a shame. A crying shame, I tell you’s.”

  “If you’re going to have a crisis of conscience, now seems like a pretty bad time to do it. Are we doing this, or not?”

  “Don’t go all Nervous Nelly on me. We’s got a deal, and I don’t go back on my deals.”

  “For the record, I’m not like the other people who come to you for this sort of thing. What happened here was an accident.”

  Montague smirks. “You ain’t like them, huh? Neither are they. Gimme a second. I’ll get the double-decker.”

  He wheels in an open casket from another room. Within the casket’s padded confines, a middle-aged man lies in peaceful repose, his pudgy pockmarked cheeks matching the extra weight he carries around the waist. What’s most striking about the man is that I’ve seen him before. “I recognize him from somewhere,” I observe.

  Montague is unabashed. “You ought to. He was the mayor.”

  Chapter 24

  “Are you completely nuts, or just on your way there?”

  Montague frowns. “Maybe you ought to step outside and take a breather. Panic ain’t gonna do you no favors.”

  “Mayor Everton’s funeral is going to be the most highly-publicized event in the city today. What makes you think you can slip something like this past thousands of people without anyone noticing?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. You gotta trust me on this one. People don’t look where you think they’re looking. Nobody ever watches the casket. The family’s got tears in their eyes; the cops are looking at their watches; the mayor’s buddies are checking out his wife in her mourning blacks, marking their calendars.”

  “And you don’t think the pallbearers will notice the extra weight?”

  Mr. Montague reaches into the mayor’s casket and slides his hand between the padded bottom and the curtained sidewall. There’s a click. The front side of the casket folds down on recessed hinges, revealing a narrow compartment eight inches high running the length of the coffin. “They’ll notice, sure. High-profile funeral like this, news cameras everywhere. Ain’t nobody gonna complain about Uncle Jack putting on a few pounds his last year in office. He was living the good life. Autopsy’s done. Heart attack, no suspicion of foul play. Once he’s in the ground, he stays there. You can sleep on it. Now gimme a hand with this.”

  Mr. Montague undresses Arden and tosses his clothing into Felita’s suitcase. Then he rolls the casket alongside the prep table, and we stuff Arden’s body into the hidden compartment. I hold my breath to keep the queasy feeling at bay. It’s so narrow we have to turn Arden’s head sideways to make it fit, but his broken neck makes it easier.

  “Any last sentiments you’d like to convey to this poor bastard?” Montague asks.

  There are lots of things I’d like to say. The guilt hasn’t stopped gnawing at my insides since this whole thing started. I consider a few remarks, but in the end I don’t have the stomach, and I shake my head.

  “I recommend burning those clothes as soon as you can,” Montague says, raising the casket’s hidden door and locking it into place. “And if you can’t burn the suitcase, disinfect it and donate it to goodwill. Don’t get a receipt.”

  I nod.

  “You okay to drive?”

  Another nod.

  “Your car smells like death, so use one of mine.” He tosses me a set of keys. “It’s the black one out back. Here’s what you do. You pull under the carport out front. You wait in the driver’s seat, and you open the tailgate when the pallbearers carry out the casket. You lead the funeral procession to Mount Elliott Cemetery. You know where that is?”

  “I think so.”

  “It’s gonna be a long one. Cops and everything. Drive slow. Don’t go over the speed limit. Don’t get in any accidents. You can run the A/C, but keep it low. I get shitty gas mileage in these things.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Ever been to Mt. Elliott before?”

  I shake my head.

  “Place is huge. When you get there, you want to go through the gate and hang a right.” He rifles through a drawer and pulls out a cemetery map, upon which he draws a circle with a red sharpie. “Here’s the burial plot. Drive there, park in the grass alongside the road, then stand out back and open the gate for the pallbearers. Have my hearse back here by three.”

  “Three? It’s going to take that long?”

  “Lots of visitors. Long wake. You’ll make it back by three if you’re lucky.”

  I’m not sure I want to do this anymore. My surrogate siblings are counting on me to get to the probate hearing on time. I can’t exactly back out now and leave Mr. Montague hanging, though. And it’ll give me some peace of mind to see Arden’s body lowered into the ground. “See you when I see you, then.”

  “Ain’t you forgetting something?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. Be right back.” I grab four of the five bundles of cash from the hearse’s glove box and return to the prep room. “Here you go.”

  “Eight big ones,” he says.

  “Two each, times four.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you. You remember everything?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Good. Now get out of here. I’m late to start the viewing.” He begins wheeling the mayor’s casket out of the room when the hidden door drops open. “Whoopsie daisy,” he says, snapping it back into place. “No problem. We’re good this time. Just a bad connection on the latch.”

  I exit the building with a renewed queasiness. After tossing Felita’s suitcase in the trunk of my own hearse, I head to my assigned vehicle, a black Lincoln similar in age and condition to Mr. Montague’s suit. I check the mirrors, noting the manual window cranks and the gear shifter on the steering column. When I turn the key, the engine gives a labored chug before starting.

  On my way around the building I get a glimpse of the viewing room through an uncurtained window. It’s huge, and the hallway outside is packed with early visitors waiting for the casket to be presented. I pull beneath the carport and turn off the engine. I’m sweating in seconds, so I leave the air conditioner running.

  After ten minutes the vents are blowing hot air in my face and I’m ready to strip off my suit and jump in the motel pool across the street. I get out and pace the carport, trying to look bored instead of nervous, while visitors come and go. Two hours pass before the pallbearers carry the casket outside. By that time the police escort has arrived, and my chest and collar are damp with sweat. I open the hearse’s back gate to let the pallbearers slide the casket inside.

  Cars start lining up behind me, ready to shove off. When I slide into the driver’s seat and crank the engine, nothing happens. The battery light on the dashboard glows red. I curse, then get out and head for the lobby.

  “Something wrong?” asks a police officer from his motorcycle.

  “Dead battery,” I tell him before racing inside.

  Mr. Montague is already on his way out to meet me. “What’s the holdup?”

  “The battery died.”

  “Shit. How’d that happen?”

  “I have no clue.”

  Mr. Montague marches out to the hearse, opens the driver’s
side door, and leans inside. “You left the goddamn A/C running.”

  “Sorry.”

  A helpful funeral-goer offers to jumpstart the hearse, but after three failed attempts the battery is pronounced dead.

  “Get your car,” Montague tells me. “Round up the pallbearers. We gotta make a transfer.”

  I pull Arden’s hearse out front and open the back gate, shoving the suitcase out of the way so the pallbearers can load the casket. After a brief shuffle involving the stalled vehicle being put in neutral and pushed out of the way, I’m back in the driver’s seat and ready to go. Mr. Montague knocks on my window to give me one last piece of advice. “Don’t fuck this up.”

  I pull the cemetery map from my coat pocket and point to the area he circled in red sharpie. “I’ve got it handled.”

  “Then we’re all done here. No need to come back when you’re through with the service. Unless you’d like to assist me with the repairs to my vehicle.”

  Now this guy is starting to piss me off. We’re already running late, and I don’t have time to come all the way back here after the burial. I open the glove box, slide some twenties off the bundle, and toss them out the window at him. “That should cover it.”

  Mr. Montague flushes red as half a dozen twenty-dollar bills flutter to the ground around his feet. He stands there speechless as I pull the hearse through the carport and follow the pair of police motorcycles in front of me. In my rearview mirror, Montague bends down and scrambles for the bills as car after car blows by him.

  I check the clock. Two thirty. Once I drop off the body, I’ll zip across town to the courthouse. No sweat. I’m already dressed for the hearing and everything.

  Pairs of motorcycle cops leapfrog through the intersections to clear the way for us, so I don’t have to worry about following the directions to the cemetery. The line of cars stretching out behind me is a sight to behold, luxury automobile logos gleaming in the sunlight, orange FUNERAL tags hanging from rearview mirrors. Mayor Everton had lots of powerful friends, and they’re out in force to commemorate his life—and no doubt to vie for scraps of the power he left behind.